BLOOD ON THE ALTAR: THE COMING WAR BETWEEN CHRISTIAN vs CHRISTIANPART 2

By Thomas R. Horn

June 10, 2014

NewsWithViews.com

The
Lucifer Effect

Perhaps
unknown to some readers is a most notorious experiment that took place
in America more than forty years ago.

Commonly
referred to today as “The Stanford Prison Experiment,”
in 1971, a group of student recruits participated in a study at Stanford
University, where they were instructed to act out roles of detainees
and guards in a makeshift prison
in the basement of the school. What resulted in the test was an unexpected
and almost immediate breakdown in normative social behavior that illustrated
such astonishing cruelty on the part of the participants that it was
quickly shut down, leading the organizer and director, Professor Philip
Zimbardo, to embark on a larger quest of discovery regarding how “the
majority of us can be seduced into behaving in ways totally atypical
of what we believe we are.”[1]
The program graphically illustrated that, given the right set of circumstances,
a majority of people are capable of monstrous inhumanity against others.
The Wikipedia entry on the Stanford Prison Experiment explains what
happened:

Participants
were recruited and told they would participate in a two-week prison
simulation. Out of 70 respondents, Zimbardo and his team selected
the 24 males whom they deemed to be the most psychologically stable
and healthy. These participants were predominantly white and middle-class.
The group was intentionally selected to exclude those with criminal
background, psychological impairments or medical problems. They all
agreed to participate in a 7–14-day period and received $15
per day (roughly equivalent to $85 in 2012).

The
experiment was conducted in the basement of Jordan Hall (Stanford’s
psychology building). Twelve of the twenty-four participants were
assigned the role of prisoner (nine plus three alternates), while
the other twelve were assigned the role of guard (also nine plus three
alternates). Zimbardo took on the role of the superintendent, and
an undergraduate research assistant the role of the warden. Zimbardo
designed the experiment in order to induce disorientation, depersonalization
and deindividualization in the participants.

The
researchers held an orientation session for guards the day before
the experiment, during which they instructed them not to physically
harm the prisoners. In the footage of the study, Zimbardo can be seen
talking to the guards: “You can create in the prisoners feelings
of boredom, a sense of fear to some degree, you can create a notion
of arbitrariness that their life is totally controlled by us, by the
system, you, me, and they’ll have no privacy.…We’re
going to take away their individuality in various ways. In general
what all this leads to is a sense of powerlessness. That is, in this
situation we’ll have all the power and they’ll have none.”

The
researchers provided the guards with wooden batons to establish their
status, clothing similar to that of an actual prison guard (khaki
shirt and pants from a local military surplus store), and mirrored
sunglasses to prevent eye contact. Prisoners wore uncomfortable ill-fitting
smocks and stocking caps, as well as a chain around one ankle. Guards
were instructed to call prisoners by their assigned numbers, sewn
on their uniforms, instead of by name.

The
prisoners were arrested at their homes and charged with armed robbery.
The local Palo Alto police department assisted Zimbardo with the arrests
and conducted full booking procedures on the prisoners, which included
fingerprinting and taking mug shots. They were transported to the
mock prison from the police station, where they were strip searched
and given their new identities.

The
small mock prison cells were set up to hold three prisoners each.
There was a small space for the prison yard, solitary confinement,
and a bigger room across from the prisoners for the guards and warden.
The prisoners were to stay in their cells all day and night until
the end of the study. The guards worked in teams of three for eight-hour
shifts. The guards did not have to stay on site after their shift.

After
a relatively uneventful first day, on the second day the prisoners
in Cell 1 blockaded their cell door with their beds and took off their
stocking caps, refusing to come out or follow the guards’ instructions.
Guards from other shifts volunteered to work extra hours to assist
in subduing the revolt, and subsequently attacked the prisoners with
fire extinguishers without being supervised by the research staff.
Finding that handling nine cell mates with only three guards per shift
was challenging, one of the guards suggested that they use psychological
tactics to control them. They set up a “privilege cell”
in which prisoners who were not involved in the riot were treated
with special rewards, such as higher quality meals. The “privileged”
inmates chose not to eat the meal in order to stay uniform with their
fellow prisoners. After only 36 hours, one prisoner began to act “crazy,”
as Zimbardo described: “#8612 then began to act crazy, to scream,
to curse, to go into a rage that seemed out of control. It took quite
a while before we became convinced that he was really suffering and
that we had to release him.”

Guards
forced the prisoners to repeat their assigned numbers to reinforce
the idea that this was their new identity. Guards soon used these
prisoner counts to harass the prisoners, using physical punishment
such as protracted exercise for errors in the prisoner count. Sanitary
conditions declined rapidly, exacerbated by the guards’ refusal
to allow some prisoners to urinate or defecate anywhere but in a bucket
placed in their cell. As punishment, the guards would not let the
prisoners empty the sanitation bucket. Mattresses were a valued item
in the prison, so the guards would punish prisoners by removing their
mattresses, leaving them to sleep on concrete. Some prisoners were
forced to be naked as a method of degradation. Several guards became
increasingly cruel as the experiment continued; experimenters reported
that approximately one-third of the guards exhibited genuine sadistic
tendencies [doing things we will not publish here]. Most of the guards
were upset when the experiment concluded after only six days….

Zimbardo
argued that the prisoners had internalized their roles, since, even
though some had stated that they would accept “parole”
even if it would mean forfeiting their pay, they did not quit when
their parole applications were all denied. Zimbardo argued they had
no reason for continued participation in the experiment after having
lost all monetary compensation, yet they did, because they had internalized
the prisoner identity.

Prisoner
No. 416, a newly admitted stand-by prisoner, expressed concern over
the treatment of the other prisoners. The guards responded with more
abuse. When he refused to eat his sausages, saying he was on a hunger
strike, guards confined him to “solitary confinement,”
a dark closet: “The guards then instructed the other prisoners
to repeatedly punch on the door while shouting at 416.” The
guards stated that he would be released from solitary confinement
only if the prisoners gave up their blankets and slept on their bare
mattresses, which all but one refused to do.

Zimbardo
aborted the experiment early when Christina Maslach, a graduate student
in psychology whom he was dating (and later married), objected to
the conditions of the prison after she was introduced to the experiment
to conduct interviews. Zimbardo noted that, of more than fifty people
who had observed the experiment, Maslach was the only one who questioned
its morality. After only six days of a planned two weeks’ duration,
the Stanford prison experiment
was discontinued.[2]

Following
the Stanford Prison Experiment, Zimbardo wanted to continue his research
into the dark side of human psychology to decipher under what conditions
“it” can be uncaged. His next big opportunity came a decade
ago, in April 2004, while on a business trip to Washington, DC. That’s
when he saw the American television show 60 Minutes airing images
taken from the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq of naked detainees forced
to simulate fellatio in front of mocking US soldiers. Other prisoners
were unclothed and made to lie atop each other; a female soldier was
seen leading a naked Iraqi around like a dog, complete with leash
and collar, and electric wires were attached to a hooded inmate who
was balancing on a small box. Later, it was learned that this type
of torture had become sexualized and included examples of a male prisoner
being sodomized by a guard using a chemical light and a female prisoner
being raped. While Americans were aghast at the images and information,
Zimbardo had seen such sadism before, right there at Stanford University
years earlier, where his undergraduates had forced fellow students
to simulate sodomy, among other things. Although Zimbardo’s
“guards” knew their classmates had actually done nothing
to deserve the maltreatment, he later wrote, “some…were
transformed into perpetrators of evil,” illustrating that “most
of us can undergo significant character transformations when we are
caught up in the crucible of social forces.”[3]

In
January 2008, Random House published Zimbardo’s impressive yet
chilling study on the subject in a book titled The Lucifer Effect:
Understanding How Good People Turn Evil. In it, Zimbardo, who was
called as an expert psychologist to testify during the trial of one
of the Abu Ghraib guards, dismantled what happened at that military
facility while also reflecting on his earlier Stanford experiment
to conclude that wherever conditions allow for what he calls “deindividualization,”
the foundations for the towers of evil are laid and a line between
good and evil can be crossed in nearly any heart.

Interestingly,
Zimbardo actually drew parallels between his findings and the biblical
story of the fall of that once-powerful angel named Lucifer:

According
to various scenarios of early Christian Church Fathers (from Cyprus,
Armenia, Greece, and France), Lucifer was God’s favorite angel.…
His sin, and the origin of his transformation into the Devil, stems
from his envy of man and disobedience to God… Apparently a cosmic
battle ensued in which…Lucifer and the fallen angels were cast
out of heaven into Hell. Lucifer is transformed into Satan, the Devil,
following his fall from grace.… Thus, “The Lucifer Effect”
represents this most extreme transformation imaginable from God’s
favorite Angel into the Devil. My work has focused on lesser transformations
of human character not as dramatic as this one, in which ordinary,
even good people begin to engage in bad deeds, for a short time or
longer, that qualify as “evil.”[4]

Zimbardo
goes on to describe how, given the right situational conditions, ordinary
persons can be transformed from good to evil and will proceed to engage
in malevolent activity, even to the point of setting aside “personal
attributes of morality, compassion, or sense of justice and fair play.”[5]

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Of
course, what Zimbardo’s research reflects was revealed beforehand
in the Bible: “The [unredeemed] heart is deceitful above all
things, and desperately wicked” (Jer. 17:9). Given these facts
about fallen human nature, is it much of a stretch to imagine the
role the Lucifer Effect will play in the lead-up to the war on truly
born again believers by Antichrist and his religious "Christian"
followers?

COMING
UP NEXT -- What University Experiments On "Obedience To Authority
Figures" Tell Us About The Coming War Between Christian vs. Christian

Over the last decade, he has authored three
books, wrote dozens of published editorials, and had several feature
magazine articles. In addition to past articles at NewsWithViews.com
, his works have been referred to by writers of the LA Times Syndicate,
MSNBC, Christianity Today, Coast to Coast, World Net Daily, White
House Correspondents and dozens of newsmagazines and press agencies
around the globe. Tom's latest book is "The Ahriman Gate," which fictionalizes
the use of biotechnology to resurrect Biblical Nephilim.

Thomas is also a well known radio personality
who has guest-hosted and appeared on dozens of radio and television
shows over the last 30 years, including "The 700 Club" and "Coast
to Coast AM." When looking for a spokesperson to promote their film
"Deceived" staring Louis Gossett Jr. and Judd Nelson, "Cloud 10 Pictures"
selected Thomas as their spokesperson to explain the Christian viewpoint
on UFO-related demonology.

Zimbardo
aborted the experiment early when Christina Maslach, a graduate student
in psychology whom he was dating (and later married), objected to the
conditions of the prison after she was introduced to the experiment
to conduct interviews. Zimbardo noted that...